Yellow & Pink
by cyber viper42
Summary: What if Naruto stepped in to prevent Ami from teasing Sakura before Ino could befriend her? Watch as the unlikely duo takes Konoha and the Shinobi world by storm.
1. Chapter 1

What if Naruto stepped in to prevent Ami from teasing Sakura before Ino could befriend her? Watch as the unlikely duo takes Konoha and the Shinobi world by storm.

Chapter 1 - A Hit To The Head

-.x.X.x.-

"Sh-Shut up!" The pink haired girl stammered out her defense, but still the larger girl pressed forward, shoving the smaller one down to her butt.

"Sakura, you know how big your forehead is?" Ami's cruel tone made it obvious what she thought of Sakura's forehead. "It's as big as a Billboard!"

The gaggle of young girls behind Ami, all of whom were students at the Academy, grinned and laughed at Sakura's predicament. To any adult walking by the park, or supervising from a distance, it would look like the group of girls was having a grand old time, enjoying the nice spring weather that Konoha was experiencing. The late winter rains had come and gone and now spring was beginning to show as flowers bloomed and nature looked more vibrant, freshly rejuvenated by the rains.

However, this was obviously not the case as Sakura had tears welling up in her eyes. Ami and her click placed themselves between the pink haired girl and any prying adult eyes. If no one of any authority saw what happened, it would simply be the word of one girl against the group of them.

"You know, it's obvious that you aren't meant to be a kunoichi Forehead-girl." Ami smiled in faux sympathy. "You could never look pretty enough to be a true kunoichi of Konoha..." Her words and the mocking and jeering words of her group had their intended effect, and Sakura's tears could not be restrained any further. Her green eyes began to redden as the salty liquid drops streamed down her cheek, spilling onto the dusty ground she was kneeling on.

-.x.X.x.-

Ami was right in thinking that no one of real consequence would see what was going on. However she was mistaken in her thought that no one would step in. Uzumaki Naruto, future Hokage, had been watching the children play in the park for what felt like all his life. Of course he wasn't allowed to join in, however that did not mean he could not watch and try to live through them just a little. If he had a mother of father, or even a guardian, they would have told him it wasn't healthy for a growing boy like him to live on the outside, looking in.

But he didn't, and here he was, just now noticing a pretty girl with pink hair surrounded by a group of girls. He recognized them from the Academy induction ceremony that Hokage-Jiji had talked at just a couple of months ago. They were among different classes, which is why he didn't know their names, except for their ring leader Ami, the bully in his class, 1-4.

When his angle shifted enough as he made his way around the perimeter of the park, he saw how they surrounded the pink-haired girl on the ground. He knew her name. Sakura, just like her hair, the Sakura blossom was vibrant pink. She was the only person whose name he knew from the other classes and simply because of her hair color.

Watching from his hiding place, he saw Ami and her friends say something that he couldn't hear over the distance and Sakura burst into more tears, coating her already puffy cheeks and wet skin with more liquid. It wasn't right that they made her cry. It wasn't fair. In the Academy, Ami had to obey the teachers, who told her not to pick on the other students and she never listened. But out here, there was nothing preventing her from making other people like Sakura cry. No adults or parents to step in.

Naruto scanned the adults hanging around the park watching their children from a distance. No one had pink hair like Sakura. In the blonde's mind that meant that there was no one looking out for her. Making up his mind, he darted out from the bushes and ran over to the group of girls. As he neared, he could hear Ami's shrill laughter as Sakura tried to speak. His sharp ears picked up her softer words.

"Shut. Up. Ami."

He needed no further reason. With a shout, he darted into a full sprint and over the last five meters, stutter stepped and leaped over the gaggle of girls, twisted around in mid air and landed between Ami and Sakura. If any shinobi had been observing this, they would have been impressed with his movements. Taking advantage of Ami's surprised silence, Naruto stepped toward her and challenged her. "If you want to pick on someone, pick on someone who can fight back." He cracked his knuckles as threateningly as his six year old fingers would let him and settled into the Academy Taijutusu's opening stance. At least he thought it was the correct stance, but he hadn't really been paying a whole lot of attention to the instructor, who had as a matter of principle, not really paid any attention to him.

His sudden arrival and threat caused some of Ami's friends to scream in terror. Naruto winced at the noise. They were freaking loud, and their shrill voices carried really, really well into the ears of the adults who were scattered around the park.

Before he had a chance to give his speech to them, the adults were on their way over. Some had shinobi training, having been students at the academy for a number of years, but never became genin. Others had actually been or were active shinobi. Most of the people who came to this particular park in Konoha's western district had civilian roots. The few who were able to become shinobi tended to stay close to their own, and away from the clans. The Academy leftovers simply held their anger at not being selected inside for far too long.

Today, everything was going to boil over into violence.

-.x.X.x.-

The first to arrive next to the screaming girls was genin Harisho Yurihara.

The daughter of a minor merchant, she knew just how badly Konoha had suffered after the Kyuubi attack. When she darted over to the girls, she saw one of the torments of her existence. At 16, she had been a genin for more than 3 years, and despite two chuunin exams, was still a genin while the rest of her original genin team were now chuunin serving in Konoha's border patrol. It troubled her to no end how much advantage the clan shinobi had over the rest of the good people of Konoha. In both exams, her other two teammates had been from clans and both times, each of her teammates were promoted over her. They were at least nice enough to disguise their superiority complexes by offering fake encouragement that the next exam would be different for her.

She was at the park to supervise her young cousin on a day off. Harisho Yami was a bright child and easily excitable. If there was trouble in the park, she would not hear the end of it from her aunt for weeks. It took her all of five seconds to take in the gaggle of screaming, gibbering academy aged girls spreading out from the blonde boy and pink-haired girl. The pink hair delayed the genin kunoichi's actions by all of a millisecond. The daughter of councilwoman Hanaro had puffy eyes and tears rolling down her face.

"What's going on here?" she asked, debating how likely it was she would get a straight answer.

Ami spoke up for her group. "He made her cry!" Yurihara could see the scheming girl time her answer so that the majority of the adults coming over to investigate would hear her.

In a matter of seconds the crowd had formed and were shouting at the blonde boy and beginning to throw rocks at him. Unfortunately, their aim was horrible and Sakura got hit in the chest and the side of her head and began to bleed.

"Stop throwing rocks!" Yurihara shouted out in her best voice of authority. She may have been a mere genin, but she had years of D and C-rank missions where she needed to make herself heard. "You hit the poor girl in the head." Her statement caused the crowd to pause and look at the pink-haired girl.

"Hey, isn't that councilwoman Hanaro's daughter?" One of the people in the back murmured loud enough for most of the crowd to hear.

"You idiots hit her, and I'm going to take her to the hospital," Yurihara declared and scooped up the young girl into her arms. After shifting the deadweight to one arm, she grabbed her cousin's hand and all but dragged him away from the park, despite his vigorous protests.

What no one in the crowd noticed until it was too late, was the blonde boy slinking off into the residential streets surrounding the park. As battered and bruised as he was, he knew he would wake up in the morning and everything would feel all better.

-.x.X.x.-

Sakura awoke in the semi-darkness of a hospital room at night. The door was closed, but still the bright hall lights reflected off the polished floor and into her eyes as she lay on her bed. She squinted and began to sit up when the nausea hit her hard. Collapsing back down into her pillow, she groaned. Between the light and her rapid descent into her pillows, her head throbbed fiercely.

Even with the limited training she had gone through at the Academy, she was sure she had a concussion. In addition to a splitting headache, she could feel the swelling on the side of her head as she tried to find a comfortable position on her pillow. One of the stupid people in the crowd must have hit her with a rock they had meant for the blonde boy.

She knew his name was Naruto.

It was hard to go to the Academy and not hear some instructor or another screaming at him to either pay attention, sit down, or stop asking questions. From the books she read, he sounded like the classic example of a trouble student, but when he had shown up, she couldn't have been happier to see him. It it weren't for him, Ami and the other girls in class 1-4 would have continued to tease her. She didn't know what was worse, to have a concussion, or been teased.

While she might have been physically worse off with his help, at least he had tried to help. In that moment, she resolved herself to learn more about the blonde boy.

-.x.X.x-

Naruto was right about his injuries. They had completely healed by the time he woke up the next morning. All that was left was some lingering patches of brown and purple from the rocks. The pain he had felt in his side when he breathed in and out was gone. The same could be said for the finger that had been pointed in a weird direction after a rock had smashed it into the ground. It was back to its normal position and nothing looked wrong with it.

Happy that the pain was gone, he slipped out of bed and threw his night cap on top of his pillow and hastily threw his covers, which had fallen onto the floor during a night of fitful sleeping, back onto his bed. Padding into the kitchen of his apartment, he started to boil water in his kettle. Leaving the water to heat up, he climbed up onto his counter and opened the cupboards attached to the wall. Examining his stock of instant ramen, he decided upon a miso and beef to start the day. His cupboards held, what would be a lifetime supply of ramen for a normal person, about a month's supply of ramen for the blonde boy.

It cost him nearly every spare ryo he had to fill his stomach. What didn't go to paying the generously low rent the manager offered him, and didn't go into replacing his meager shinobi supplies, went into food. He made sure to put a hundred ryo a month into his safety fund, just in case his food got stolen or something, but skipping a meal a week was a good tradeoff for having a reserve of money. Or so Naruto believed.

When he had waited the required three minutes for the ramen to cool, the ramen cups were empty within 30 seconds. Eating quickly, he found, along with drinking lots of water, helped disguise the taste of the cheap ramen and the unknowingly pitiful nutrition it provided. Naruto's theory was that Ichikura's Ramen spoiled his taste for the regular stuff because the hand-made meals from the old man's stand were simply divine. Ramen truly was the food of the Kami.

Today was a normal day at the Shinobi Academy for Naruto. His first lesson started bright and early at 07:45, but when he spared a moment to glance at the clock on his kitchen wall, he was alarmed to see it indicated the time was 08:27.

"Aw man..." Naruto slapped his bare forehead with an open palm. "Iruka-sensei is going to be pissed!"


	2. Chapter 2

-.x.X.x.-

Chapter 2- A Beautiful Day

-.x.X.x.-

Hanuro Sakura tugged her fingers through her long, vibrantly pink hair, straightening the smallest detail to properly look like the girl her mother wanted. Even at the tender age of six, Sakura knew her destiny lay with the shinobi forces of Konoha. While her near-genius intelligence put her vocabulary at the level of a 10-year-old, she couldn't describe how she knew where she belonged.

It frustrated her mother to no end, but wanting to stay on speaking terms with her daughter, Hanuro Mebuki had no choice but to enroll Sakura in the Shinobi Academy. Mebuki was no civilian, having been a kunoichi for almost all her life. She knew the horrors of the world outside Konoha's walls and desperately wanted to shelter her daughter. Her husband Kizashi had stood up to his wife's strong personality in defense of their child in an argument that still stuck in Sakura's mind. It had lead to a cooling in her relationship with her mother but now that she was in the academy, it was slowly warming once again, much to Mebuki's delight.

Having been discharged from the hospital late the night before, Sakura was allowed to sleep in to help her recover better. Medical ninjutsu allowed for the brain to recover from a concussion in under twelve hours for young children, and less than six hours for a strong genin or average chuunin. For a Jounin, their chakra system was advanced enough to promote healing by passing through the affected area along with the medical chakra and ninjutsu to temporarily copy their healing abilities. It was only natural, Sakura found out at the hospital, for significant research and medical treatment testing to be invested in helping shinobi recover from concussions because they were one of the more common debilitating injuries shinobi sustained. A broken bone could be set and healed within hours by a trainee, but without dedicated and specialist treatment, a concussion could take weeks to properly heal and allow the injured shinobi to return to active duties.

This left Sakura sedately arriving at the Academy at 08:45 with a note in her hand for her Sensei from the doctor. The plan was to gently ease her back into the routine of the academy over the course of a week, re-introducing physical and mental activities in steadily increasing difficulty. Until her right foot stepped onto the Academy grounds, she hadn't once thought about the other students who had created the incident that led to her injuries. It struck her as odd that her normally overactive brain hadn't even considered the situations she could easily predict involving Ami and her cohorts.

It was this sudden realization that she wasn't mentally at her normal level that froze her in her tracks. Years later she would recall the event to come as one of fate, but when the one and only Uzumaki Naruto barreled into her with a shout of alarm, all she felt was the raging inferno of her temper. It took her a fraction of a second to process her rapid introduction to the ground, but when she slowly rose to her feet, her hands formed tight fists.

"BAKA!" Sakura yelled at the clumsy blonde who had knocked her over. With a lightening fast grab, she had Naruto's jumpsuit collar in her left hand as she raised her fist. "Why did you run into me!"

A decidedly angry Naruto defended himself. "Why did YOU stop in the middle of the freaking gate?" He yelled back with just as much gusto as the pink-haired she-devil in front of him.

"That doesn't mean it's okay to just trample someone!" Sakura retorted. "I'm injured! I'm a delicate flower!" She emphasized her point by smacking Naruto over the head several times, creating several lumps which grew quickly.

Naruto scrambled to escape Sakura's grasp for several seconds to no avail. Finally accepting his fate, he stopped struggling, only to realize that he hadn't been hit after her first strikes. Peaking out from behind his raised arms, he looked curiously at Sakura.

Sakura's brain had been on autopilot, reacting as she would for anyone until she saw herself hitting her savior from the previous day. Suddenly ashamed, she looked directly at her feet, trying to hide herself while standing less than one meter from him.

"I never got the chance to thank you for stepping in yesterday." Sakura mumbled softly, but audibly thanks to Naruto's excellent hearing. Letting go of Naruto's collar, Sakura took a half-step backward and bowed to Naruto as traditional etiquette demanded of her.

"Eh, don't worry about it!" Naruto tried to brush off her thanks as he scratched the back of his head. "I hate seeing people getting picked on."

Sakura looked up at his words and immediately felt the awkwardness of their situation. Seeing the bumps on his head for the first time, courtesy of her fist, she also noticed that the scrapes and cuts from the previous day were absent from his face.

"Weren't you hurt from all those rocks yesterday?" She asked curiously. "Those parents were really stupid to throw those at us." Her comment earned her a beaming smile from the blonde.

"Yeah the rocks hurt, but I heal really fast!" Naruto seemed to bounce on the balls of his feet, vibrating with energy. "When I wake up in the morning, I'm all healed up!"

Sakura was about to voice her skepticism when the shouts of older children leaving the academy building for the training yard stopped her. "I have to get to class!" She exclaimed, desperately looking around for wherever her note had fallen to. Unable to see it immediately, she began to tear up and shuffle towards the entrance to the academy.

"Hey!" Naruto called after her. "Were you looking for this?" He held up the note and smiled warmly. His smile grew even wider when Sakura's attitude when from gloomy to excited when she saw the paper in his hand. Trotting the several meters to Sakura, Naruto handed her the piece of paper

"I gotta get to class, or Iruka-sensei will kill me!" Naruto didn't wait to hear what Sakura said in reply. He was already sprinting over the academy grounds. Rather than walk into the main entrance, he quickly scaled the building and entered via the roof-top balcony door.

Sakura observed his progress and noted that the location of class 1-4 where both Naruto and Ami were both together. It was faster for the blond boy to take the unorthodox route, where he probably saved thirty seconds to a full minute. It struck her that Naruto must often be late if he had the knowledge of such a shortcut and also the experience needed to climb up the 15 meter vertical face without pausing to look for handholds.

For lack of a better word he scrambled up the wall as if it was nothing. It reminded Sakura of her own, barely passing, physical grades on the obstacle courses and strength training. Sighing, Sakura made her way to her classroom where she handed her Sensei the note before taking her customary seat in the front row. Behind her she could hear the quiet words from the girls in Ami's click.

-.x.X.x.-

"NARUTO!" Said blonde winced as he paused in mid step to look at Iruka with a guilty expression on his face.

"H-Hey there Iruka-sensei!" Naruto nervously scratched the back of his head as he was prone to do when un-sure of how to deal with the current situation. "Long-time, no see!" This got the class to chuckle, but that only made Iruka's annoyance greater. If he didn't take steps quickly, he would lose control of his class.

"Would you like to explain what you are doing tiptoeing into my class ten minutes late?" Iruka demanded.

"Would you believe me if I said that I ran into someone, got beaten up and needed help finding some paper?" Naruto half asked, half begged.

Half-way accross Hi no Kuni, Hatake Kakashi felt an inexplicable urge to shout with joy. After the moment had passed without any attack or threat made to his person, he turned the page of his latest Icha Icha novel.

-.x.X.x.-

Naruto couldn't avoid the detention Iruka decided to give him for his tardiness, however it didn't mean that he couldn't enjoy the history lesson about the Fourth Hokage. His hero was, hands down, the best shinobi in all of history! With his Harashin jutsu he had single-handedly turned the tide of the Third Shinobi War. Naruto silently vowed that he would become a even stronger shinobi and be a better Hokage.

When the lunch hour arrived, Naruto realized that he had forgotten to bring any food. In his rapid cross-Konoha sprint his only focus had been on arriving at the Academy as soon as possible. As the class walked outside Naruto asked around to see if anyone would be willing to give him a little bit of their lunch. Luckily Akimichi Choji was feeling generous and shared a bag of chips, while Inuzuka Kiba gave him a rice ball. It wasn't much, but along with a long drink from the water fountain his stomach felt full and stopped rumbling.

"You know, Naruto, if you don't eat enough, you won't grow up tall." Choji commented as he passed the bag of chips over for Naruto to take a few more. "My Tou-san says it is important to have a large and balanced diet."

"Is you Tou-san a chef?" Naruto asked. It wasn't often that he spoke with Choji, but he was sure that Choji was from a shinobi clan. What did food have to do with being a shinobi?

"Not really." Choji replied. "The Akimichi clan focuses on developing the nutritional supplements and food rations that Konoha Shinobi use in the field."

"Yeah!" Kiba jumped into the conversation. "We Inuzuka use the food pills that Choji's family makes to become super-strong in a fight with our nin-ken!"

The three of them chatted on for most of the lunch break. Naruto expounded on the virtues of Ramen, while Choji argued the finer points between different brands of potato chips. When there was less than ten minutes left for their break, Naruto spotted Ami and her friends from class 1-3 making their way towards a semi-secluded corner of the Academy grounds. Looking at where they were going, Naruto spotted a now-familiar splash of neon pink hair. Sakura was all by herself eating a from a Bento, and didn't see the inbound pack of girls.

"I gotta run to the bathroom. See you in class!" Naruto flipped himself to his feet. "Thanks for the food guys!" After the sitting duo nodded their acceptance of the thanks, Naruto shot into the academy. However, once inside, he darted through the hallways as silently as he could as some of the older classes were still in session. From painful experience Naruto knew better than to cause any sort of interruption around some of these Sensei.

Finding and empty classroom on the far side of the Academy building, Naruto darted in, opened a window and slipped out. While not running, he made his way as quickly as he could to where he saw the confrontation about to take place. Rounding the final corner he spotted Ami's cohort surrounding Sakura and from the tears once again in Sakura's eyes, knew that they were tormenting her like the previous afternoon.

Dealing with a crowd by himself was never fun, and just because these girls were not grownups or trained shinobi, it didn't mean that he really wanted to tangle with them all at once. In situations where he was cornered, trying to appear non-aggressive usually lulled the crowd into lowering their guard. This created opportunities to dart through a few legs and escape from the trap. That, however, was very much different from pushing his way through the girls, grabbing Sakura's hand and trying to lead her back out the hole he had just punched through the ranks of the surrounding crowd. Which is what he did.

Surprise got him through to Sakura's side, but once everyone registered his presence trying to extricate Sakura from the center, things got out of hand quickly. Just like the previous afternoon, the gang of girls started screaming and yelling. Their shrieks caused Naruto to wince and try to block one of his ears with free hand, the other keeping a firm grip on Sakura's arm to keep her close and to partially shield her. With a quick glance he saw that her face was only a little puffy and red from tears, but didn't show any signs of being hit.

"You okay?" He asked just loud enough for her to hear his voice. Sakura sniffled and wiped away tears that were falling down her cheeks. She nodded her head and mumbled a couple words that Naruto couldn't really determine over the shrieks of the bullies.

-.x.X.x.-

Funeno Daikoku was a fairly average Academy instructor. A Chuunin with several years of missions under his belt, he now passed on his hard-won knowledge to new generations of Konoha shinobi-hopefuls. As was his custom during his lunch period, Daikoku walked the grounds of the Academy keeping an eye on the students to make sure no mischief was done when they were away of their instructors' careful watch. It was not unknown for a student from one of the clans to attempt an advanced jutsu in order to impress his or her peers. While the occasional successes became legendary for a week or so until forgotten, the failed attempts often left the student with horrific injuries. From broken bones to nearly full-body burns, he had seen many different results over his years as an instructor.

Therefore when he heard the shrieks of several girls carrying shocked undertones, he immediately knew that something needed investigation. With a quick shunshin he arrived to see Uzumaki Naruto lash out at one of the girls around him.

-.x.X.x.-

"Shut up!" Naruto shouted at Ami's gaggle of accomplices. "You shouldn't pick on Sakura-chan!" Naruto's statement was received with about as much concern as wolf being viciously pounced on by a field mouse.

"Why are you defending forehead girl?" Ami demanded, defiantly folding her arms in front of her chest. "Don't you know she is a loser?"

"Is not!" Naruto maturely retorted.

"I guess a baka like you would try to help trash like yourself." Ami replied, breaking Naruto's excellently planned "is-not, is-too" argument plan. Unable to counter her words, Naruto didn't say anything.

Ami took his silence to indicate his acceptance of her words. "You see, even you must realize that you are a dobe who won't ever do anything useful! You should kn-" She was cut off when Naruto's small fist jabbed out and tagged Ami in the neck.

While his attack didn't have much force behind it and his short arms meant that he didn't follow through as far as he was hoping he would, the contact he made with Ami's face was enough to generate the sound of a skin-on-skin slap. In Ami's shocked silence, Daikoku arrived from his shunshin in a shower of leaves and a puff of chakra smoke.

-.x.X.x.-

Being kept at the academy after classes got out for the day was not an unheard of situation for young Uzumaki Naruto. No, his presence was barely seen as something to be noted. Haruno Sakura's presence, on the other hand, was most definitely something to take note of. With her near-perfect academic scores and to-date average physical scores she looked like she would be one of the higher ranking students in her year.

The duo had been separated from the rest of the academy students since lunch-time and set to work cleaning litter from the academy grounds, but not together. Once the students left, they cleaned the chalkboards in each classroom. Each had a supervising instructor; Iruka watched Naruto while some sensei neither had seen before was watching Sakura complete her tasks.

"Naruto, what am I going to do with you?" Iruka sighed after contemplating the options for most of the afternoon. "You know better than to hit another student outside of training."

"But they were making fun of Sakura-chan!" Naruto protested, turning from his half-clean board with the sponge in-hand.

"That doesn't mean that you are allowed to hit them." Iruka admonished. "Striking a fellow Konoha shinobi in anger can land you in jail, Naruto.

"So you're saying that I should have left Sakura there to get picked on?" Naruto demanded, his hackles raising. "I can't go to a sensei. No one would believe me anyway..."

Iruka was taken aback for a moment before he realized how true that statement was. The hatred of the Kyuubi and thus its Jinchuuriki was prevalent throughout the village and seemed to manifest itself in everyone who was supposed to be impartial towards the blonde boy.

Iruka personally held no love for the boy, but his job demanded that he be fair but strict. It wasn't easy being so close to the creature that had killed his parents. It made him feel uneasy, something that he was sure Naruto picked up because the boy was very sensitive to the feelings of the people around him. Iruka simply felt uncomfortable when Naruto was near him. The powerful seal the Yondaime used to capture and hold the Kyuubi had worked so far. But just because it was apparently locked away did not make him feel much better. If he was honest, it felt a touch unnatural to have such a powerful entity hidden away behind a few lines of chakra-conducting ink.

"Naruto." Iruka broke the silence that had fallen. "I want you to come to me if something like this happens again." The chuunin could see Naruto's surprise radiating from his widened blue eyes. "I am willing to listen and trust you, but I need you to promise me that you will always tell me the truth." He paused for that to sink in for a moment before continuing. "No matter what that truth is."

Looking to the half-finished chalk board Iruka picked up a clean cloth. "Come on, let's finish this up so you can get going."

It would be years before Iruka truly understood the impact of his words on his blonde student.

-.x.X.x.-

Haruno Sakura left the Academy in a fowl mood. Her arms were burning from both the lack of blood flow as she reached up to clean the chalkboards, and also the physical exertion that the scrubbing required. As she left the Academy building the sun's low position in the sky shot intense light into her eyes. Even as she winced and tried to turn her head to look away she could feel a headache coming on. The medical staff had informed her that headaches and light sensitivity could be lingering symptoms from her concussion.

"Oi Sakura-chan!" The pink-haired girl turned to see Uzumaki Naruto sliding down the rain downspout on the side of the academy. Two stories above him one of the Academy sensei was shaking his head as he closed the window the boy must have climbed out of. When he was three meters off the ground he launched himself away from the building with a kick from his legs and landed in a crouch before trotting over to her.

"What do you want?" Sakura asked wearily. She simply didn't have the energy to be angry with him.

"Let me walk you home!" Naruto beamed at her as if there was nothing wrong with his statement. "It's nearly dark and Iruka-sensei said I should make sure you get home okay." Naruto looked puzzled as he continued. "He said something about you being hurt, but you don't have any new bandages." Naruto tilted his head to the side and folded his arms into an 'I'm thinking' pose. "Strange...Iruka-sensei is usually right. He's smart like that."

"No..." Sakura trailed off before continuing. "I got hit in the head yesterday. I have a headache because of it."

"Oh!" Naruto brightened when he heard that Iruka was right. "So it wasn't anything from today?" He asked because he was worried that he might have done something to hurt her while attempting to help her.

"No." Sakura gently shook her head as to not rattle her brain. Finally making up her mind, she began to walk towards the entrance where the two had literally bumped into each other that morning. "Are you coming?" She asked as she looked back at the blonde boy.

"You bet!" Naruto pumped his fist into the air with enthusiasm.

Today truly was a beautiful day.


	3. A New Wind Is Blowing

-.x.X.x.-

Chapter 3 - A New Wind Is Blowing

-.x.X.x.-

For the twelfth time in his Academic career, and for the eleventh time this month, Naruto woke up to the sound of his alarm. It was something that Sandaime-Jiji had given him for his birthday before he had started the Academy. After discovering just how boring the classes were he quickly 'forgot to set' the alarm. The past two weeks, however, were a completely different story.

Jumping out his bed he ran to his kitchen and threw a pot of fresh water onto the stove and dumped into two containers of ramen. Setting the culinary experiment to medium heat, he ran to his bathroom to shiver under a cold shower for just long enough to clean himself off. After toweling off and dressing, he feasted on his now warm breakfast ramen.

It had taken two full weeks to perfect the water-to-ramen ratios for the different flavors of instant ramen and then find the right heat setting to cook his meal in the time it took him to perform his morning routines. Instead of first boiling the water, he now boiled the water with the noodles already soaking, shortening the time it took to cook. Now at the beginning of the third week of his new routine, Naruto had just about everything figured out.

Slurping down his nourishing meal he grabbed his pre-packed bag of shinobi equipment and dashed out his window. Leaping from his balcony to the vertical metal tube meant to carry water from the roof to the ground, he shimmied down to the alley and took off running through the morning crowds in the street.

Darting between the foot-traffic, stalls and animal-drawn cart, Naruto made arrived just as Sakura was leaving her family's house. A smallish two-story structure, it was exactly the type of cozy abode that Naruto imagined that he would want to live in one day.

"Sakura-chan!" Naruto called out his greeting, hoping to brighten everyone's day with his exuberance. So what if something bad happened? All you had to do was try again!

"Good morning, Naruto." Sakura smiled at the blonde boy and together they began the walk to the Academy. Even though Naruto's apartment was on the opposite side of town from Sakura's and he had to pass within just a few blocks of the Academy to get to her house, didn't stop the boy from showing up every morning to walk her to the Academy.

"Ready for another awesome day of training?" Naruto nearly shouted. "Iruka-sensei said we were going to do Taijutsu today!"

Sakura didn't look too excited and Naruto spotted a flash of discomfort cross her face. "The last time my class had to do Taijutsu, Ami left me bruised for a week." She slowed her pace, suddenly not looking forward to classes that day.

The Academy was segregated into different classes for most of the lessons, however it worked better for all the classes to be joined together for the practical portion of their education. There simply was not enough time in the week for every class in every year to get the required practice time on the Academy training grounds. While the Academy was located in the middle of the village for the sake of security, it sacrificed the ability to expand without costly construction efforts. The combined Taijutsu classes were supervised by the regular instructors and the instructors not teaching typically lent a hand, especially for the younger years clumsily learning the standard Academy katas.

"Ne, Sakura-chan." Naruto bumped her with his hip, jolting her to her right. Her single stumble and quick recovery showed how far her training had already taken her. Even while distracted, she was still alert enough to be on-guard in a moment's notice.

"Naruto..." Sakura growled at the blonde boy, raising a fist.

"Woah woah woah!" Naruto leaped away from the pink-haired girl with his typical agility. "No need to get violent! Save it for the training grounds!" Naruto's words seemed to hit Sakura in the right way, so Naruto slightly lowered his guard and stepped towards Sakura. The two of them hadn't stopped their walk to the Academy.

"The Sensei's won't like us constantly pairing up." Sakura considered aloud as she thought over Naruto's unspoken proposition.

"Eh, let Iruka-sensei tell them to eat dirt." Naruto's flagrantly disrespectful attitude towards the majority of the staff, with the exception of his class' sensei had slowly become more and more reasonable to the girl as the two spent nearly every out-of-class moment by each other's side.

It was subtle, their dislike of Naruto, but when she paid attention, it seemed clear as day. He had been kicked out of class no fewer than two times each day of the past two weeks. The previous Friday he had only been able to sit through one class; Iruka-sensei's. The rest of the lessons he had forced from the classroom and made his way to the rain gutter outside the second floor room Sakura's class met in. Rain or shine he watched her sensei write on the board and during lunch he asked her his questions.

His questions showed Sakura that he was far from stupid. While his reading skills were lagging behind what Sakura considered to be normal, he had a near picture-perfect memory and was able to re-write the kanji that her sensei had written on the board when he heard something he had a question about.

"Naruto..." Sakura trailed off making up her mind and began to run towards the Academy entrance a hundred meters ahead of them. "I'll race you to the gate!"

What!" Naruto was surprised by her out of character move. Sakura volunteering to perform physical activity? "Hey! No fair!"

Sakura's laughter infected his attitude and a grin formed on his face.

-.x.X.x.-

"Hey Shikamaru!" Naruto bounded over to the lazy brown-haired boy. Behind him trailed a neon pink haired girl. The same troublesome girl that Shikamaru had noticed to spend an unusually high amount of time in the blonde's presence over the past two weeks.

"Yeah so this is Sakura-chan." Naruto introduced his friends to each other. "She's smart like you!" That caught the Nara's attention. There were few who were truly as smart as nearly every member of the genius clan. Those that were, were closely watched by members of the clan. After the disaster that was Orochimaru's discovery and subsequent defection, it had become much harder for those of elevated intelligence to get quality cloud-watching alone time.

"Yo." Shikamaru decided it wasn't worth the effort to do much more. Naruto was plenty talkative and would take care of things, and right on schedule the blonde began to laugh and scratch the back of his head.

Sakura looked unsure about to make of the lazy boy until Naruto casually dismissed his actions. "He's always like that. He's a good guy to hang out with too!" That firmed up Sakura's resolve.

"It's nice to meet you Shikamaru-kun." Sakura bobbed her head in a pseudo bow in an effort to bring some level of tradition that would not be too abnormal in the presence of the number one most disrespectful blonde and lazy Nara. His spiky black hair and apparent intelligence, according to Naruto, left no other logical alternatives.

The sudden sound of crunching chips startled Naruto and Sakura, the blonde jumping a solid half-meter off the ground and turning a half circle in one motion. Pointing an accusatory finger at a...large...red haired boy.

"Choji! You did that on purpose, didn't you!" The blonde shouted, suddenly breathing heavily. "You trying to kill me or something?"

Choji shrugged and walked up to Sakura. "Hello, I'm Choji." He greeted her, offering her a chip.

"Sakura." She replied as she politely reached into the offered bag and withdrew a single chip. "Thank you."

Choji grunted noncommittally and went to Shikamaru's side and lay down beside him.

"Naruto, you have the strangest friends..." Sakura deadpanned. She knew the two boys lying on the ground by reputation. They were heirs to two of Konoha's great clans. Their fathers were of the famous Ino-Shika-Cho team that devastated Iwa in the Third Great Shinobi War.

"Naw, they are normal enough." Naruto replied, having teleported to the ground and now busily watching the clouds with the other two boys. Sakura could only blink. In the time it took her to glance at the sky and look back to where the blonde was, Naruto had moved more than 5 meters. Her eyes hadn't even registered any motion. Having eaten her lunch and feeling slightly tired, she joined the boys and lay down on the grass near Naruto and stared at the clouds as they drifted through the sky.

-.x.X.x.-

As days turned into weeks and weeks started to approach a month, Sakura and Naruto became closer and closer, the blonde spending vast quantities of time and energy in his efforts to keep Sakura happy. There were times when she appeared sad, usually after Ami had cornered her while Naruto wasn't there to help shield her, and Naruto felt guilty for letting that happen. The fact that he was in detention for previously helping Sakura didn't seem to register as a valid excuse for leaving her side and providing the opportunity for Sakura to be targeted. If he wasn't succeeding in his mission, he wasn't trying hard enough!

Their association was slowly becoming a norm at the academy, and yet another arrow in Ami's quiver with which to attack Sakura. One particular Tuesday when Ami had schemed Naruto into another detention, the bully and her click ruthlessly tore down Sakura's emotional walls and began to tease the pink-haired girl about her 'boyfriend'.

"I don't know what he sees in you, Forehead-Girl." Ami laughed in her customary and cruel laugh. "I didn't know boys were dumb enough to think you were pretty."

Another girl picked up right where Ami left off. "The two of you don't even have enough brains to be the Dobe, Naruto is sooo dumb."

"Quit trying to look pretty for your boyfriend. You only make your ugliness more obvious."

"No one even likes you!"

"Stop pretending to be a Kunoichi!"

"Go home and don't come back!"

"We never want to see you here, ever!"

-.x.X.x.-

By the time Naruto found her, Sakura had cried herself to sleep. Picking her up in what Iruka-sensei had just showed them was the fireman's carry, he struggled to lift her light frame up the stairs to Iruka's office only to find the door locked and the lights off. He had gone home for the day.

"Oh man, what am I going to do?" Naruto danced around clumsily before he almost smacked Sakura into a wall. Suddenly hyper-aware of how he was holding her, he stilled and began to think. There was less than an hour until sunset and Sakura was supposed to be home almost as soon as the academy was let out for the day. He doubted that any of the other Sensei were here this late, having seen the one supervising his detention leave almost as soon as he was done scrubbing the boards.

He quickly came to his decision. He would carry the sleeping girl nearly 3 kilometers to her house. Naruto fortified his muscles and began to carefully carry Sakura down the stairs and out of the Academy building. Once off the grounds, he stuck to the back streets and alleys where the crowds were fewer, if non-existent, at this time of day. That didn't mean there were not a few angry villagers who shouted at him to 'release his hostage'.

The distance that he and Sakura walked or ran in the morning took them no more than 45 minutes, even with the occasional congestion of the early morning streets. By the time Naruto had made it to Sakura's house, it had taken him more than double that time. He had not stopped to rest. He had not deviated from his path except to avoid crowds of people who did not appreciate what he was doing.

Fearing that her parents would be mad at him, Naruto gently put Sakura down on the back entrance of her house and tried to quietly slip away. Little did he know that two pairs of eyes were watching him.


End file.
